Emergency Contact
Mary H. K. Choi
For Mom
PENNY.
“Tell me something, Penny . . .”
Penny knew that whatever Madison Chandler was going to say, she wasn’t going to enjoy it. Madison Chandler leaned in close, mouth smiling, beady eyes narrowed. Penny held her breath.
“Why is your mom such a slut?”
The taller of the two girls glared pointedly at Penny’s mom, who was chatting with Madison’s father a few feet away.
Blood pounded in Penny’s ears.
Possible reactions to Madison Chandler calling your mom a slut:
1. Punch her in the face.
2. Punch her disgusto, knuckle-dragging, pervert father in the face.
3. Do nothing. Rage-cry later in the privacy of your bedroom while listening to The Smiths. You are a dignified pacifist. Namaste.
4. Unleash the pyrokinetic abilities bequeathed to you upon birth, scorching the shopping mall with the fire of a trillion suns.
Penny scanned her opponent’s green-flecked blue eyes. Why was this happening? And at the Apple Store no less? This was a safe space. A haven. Penny was almost out of this stifling town for good. She was so close.
“I asked you a question.” Madison sucked her teeth. She had those clear braces that fooled no one.
Punching her would be therapeutic.
“Hello? Is anyone in there?”
So therapeutic.
Christ, who was Penny kidding? It was option three. It was always option three. At this stage of the game there was no need to be a hero. Especially at 5'1", with a “cute” right hook and reaction times that were sluggish at best.
Whatever. In four days Penny would be off to college and the opinions of these micro-regionally famous people would no longer matter.
Just as Madison drew back, to glare at her from a different, arguably more menacing angle, Penny’s assigned Apple Genius materialized with her brand-new phone.
Deus ex-MacStore dude.
Penny clutched the smooth box. It gleamed with promise and felt expensively heavy in her hands. She glanced over by the laptops where “Maddy’s Daddy,” as he’d introduced himself (barf), was doing a looming-leering thing at her mom, Celeste. Penny sighed. She’d been campaigning for a new phone since Christmas, and this was not at all going down how she’d planned. Penny had envisioned more fanfare. At least some help picking out a case.
“Seriously, what’s with your mom’s geisha whore outfit?”
Okay, Madison Chandler may have gotten a Chanel caviar purse at fourteen (it was a hand-me-down) and a Jeep Wrangler at sixteen, but wow, there were sandwiches smarter than this girl.
First off, geishas weren’t prostitutes. Common mistake. Typically made by the willfully ignorant and intellectually incurious. Some geishas beguiled their clients with dance and artful conversation like in Memoirs of a Geisha, a novel Penny adored until she discovered some rando white guy had written it. Second, as anyone with even the most cursory observational skills can tell you, the kimono offers exemplary coverage. It was burka-adjacent or perhaps chador-ish, since kimonos didn’t have the hair and face covering bit.
Still, Penny wished, not for the first time, that her mom would stop wearing crop tops. Especially with leggings. It was positively gynecological. Penny, of course, was dressed in her customary shapeless black garb that was appropriate both day and night for being ignored by everyone.
“We’re Korean,” whispered Penny. Madison’s lip twitched in confusion, as if she’d been informed that Africa wasn’t a country. “Geishas are Japanese,” she finished. If you’re going to be racist you should try to be less ignorant, although maybe that was a contradiction. . . .
Mr. Chandler roared with laughter at something Celeste said, who, for the record, was hot but not that funny.
“Daddy,” whined Madison, making her way toward him.
Daddy? Yuck.
Penny bet they were the type of family that mouth kissed. Penny walked over too.
“If you want, you can come by my office and I can take a look at your portfolio,” continued Mr. Chandler. He was at least six foot five and Penny could see straight up to his nose hair.
“As I tell all my clients, it’s the early bird who gets the retirement worm. Especially with an empty nest.” He nodded at Penny.
“Dang it,” he said, patting his pockets with a practiced air. “I don’t have a card, but if you want to . . .” Mr. Chandler held his phone out and mimed typing into it with a toothy grin.
Penny shut it down.
“Mom.” Penny grabbed her by the wrist. “We have to go.”
? ? ?
Everything about the way Penny’s mom interacted with Mr. Chandler with his gleaming wedding ring and his hot-pink polo shirt infuriated her. It was the same old tale with Celeste and guys. You’d think she’d give it a rest and pay some attention to her only daughter the week before she left for college, but no, she was too busy flapping her lash extensions to some fake-tanned creep.
In the car, Celeste rearranged her boobs in her gray striped top and latched her seat belt. Having a MILF for a mom was garbage.
Celeste pulled out of the parking lot as the uneasy silence thickened.
On the highway, the Japanese cat mounted on her mother’s dashboard rattled. Penny stared at it. It was the size of a dinner roll, with a detached, spring-loaded head and blank cartoon eyes. This one, a recent addition, had usurped plastic Hello Kitty when Kitty’s features got bleached off by the sun. Celeste insisted on accessorizing everything. It was pathological. It reminded Penny of the rich bitches in the “Super Six,” Maddy and Rachel Dumas and Allie Reed and the three other glossy-haired sadists who wore a ton of rings and bracelets and had a new, sparkly phone case every week. You could hear them walking down the hall since the jangling crap attached to their book bags made such a racket. Thing is, if Celeste had gone to Ranier High, she probably would have been friends with them.